Jia Yi Gu
Assistant Professor of Architecture
I am a Los Angeles-based architectural scholar, curator, and designer whose research explores the materiality of buildings and the history of cultural techniques in architecture. I develop research and curatorial projects, publications, and programs about architecture and its wide-ranging practices.
As an architectural historian, my research examines materials as sites of empirical-knowledge production in twentieth-century architecture鈥攖he testing protocols, mock-ups, and experimental infrastructures through which architects and industry established authority over unfamiliar building materials. My dissertation-related work focuses on modeling, mock-ups, and material testing practices in the office of Eero Saarinen and Associates.
滨鈥檓 Assistant Professor of Architecture in the Department of Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts at 91探花 and one-half of the architecture and research studio . For over a decade, I served as director and curator of two small and unusual architecture institutions at the Schindler House and , a Los Angeles-based project space for experimental architecture. I am a Board member of the .
In 2024, I co-curated the Getty PST ART project Material Acts, an interdisciplinary , , and exploring material experimentation in design and architecture at the intersections of architecture, craft, and science, presented at Craft Contemporary. I am co-curator of the exhibition Unknowing Los Angeles, a history of postmodern Los Angeles architecture with Gary Riichir艒 Fox and Aurora Tang.
Alongside my historical scholarship, I work with, support, and advocate for small art and architecture organizations. 滨鈥檓 working on The Institution is a Proposition, a publication on the mission, histories, and labor economies of small and unusual architecture institutions.
My work has been generously supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Getty Foundation, California Council of Arts, Canadian Center for Architecture, DAAD, and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.
Courses Taught
(Please refer to HSA Departmental Courses for this semester鈥檚 courses.)
- ARCH179A Material Acts
- ARCH179B Architecture on Display
- ARCH179D Postmodern Los Angeles
- ARCH179E Bioregional Design Research聽
- HSA 10 Architecture and Its Media